Personalized Drug Safety: Live Webcast

by Dr. Bertalan Meskó on September 27, 2007

A live webcast of Patient-Driven Drug Safety Monitoring Program is taking place on Thursday, October 4th at 2PM and will feature Dr. Judith Jones and Dr. Hugo Stephenson who will explain how simple it can now be for anyone to better assess the level of risks associated with the drugs they are taking or prescribing. It means the webcast is open to physicians and patients as well. We will be able to ask questions live via e-mail and have them answered during the webcast. I believe it’s a good project and can be really useful for patients to know more about their medications. Anyway, it’s a sensitive topic as the decision is strictly belongs to the doctors. But patient education is also important. What do you think?

Recent studies by the Institute of Medicine and the US Food and Drug Administration reveal that the FDA does not focus enough attention on monitoring drugs once they are approved. Most drug approvals are based on clinical trials involving a few hundred or a few thousand patients, but many uncommon side effects don’t emerge until a drug is being used by millions of people. Through a quick online enrollment on the iGuard website (www.iguard.org), patients who regularly take medications can choose to receive patient-specific updates about the safety of the medications they are taking from an independent source. And participants in iGuard will receive these updates whenever new information is learned about their medicine, allowing them to make the most informed decisions about their healthcare.